Bainbridge Students Create a Civilization, Bury It, Then Find It

Audrey Baker, 13, and Tristan Smith, 13, use a screen to sift through the buckets of dirt their classmates excavated from their dig site at Hyla Middle School on Bainbridge Island on Thursday.
(MEEGAN M. REID | KITSAP SUN)

Meegan M. Reid

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND - With a toothbrush and a wire-thin pick, seventh-grader Emma Kelly eased soil from a freshly exhumed scroll found under her Bainbridge school's playground.

"Look! There's some writing on it!" the Hyla Middle School student said as red pictographs were exposed.

"It could be a learning tool or a book or some kind of language key," guessed fellow seventh-grader Claire Robinson.

Even though the "ancient" text was deposited by another group of students just the other day, the thrill of discovery and the challenge of revealing the artifact's secrets are very real, said history teacher Jennifer Williams.

"They're actually running this dig," she said Thursday as she oversaw about a dozen students who were digging and sifting soil, and measuring, tagging and bagging artifacts. "They're doing the real scientific process. They have to use the method and they have to be accurate."

Williams started the annual archaeology lesson at Hyla, a small private sixth- through eighth-grade school on Bucklin Hill Road, 12 years ago. The lesson has expanded through the years, and now features a pretend dig complete with real archaeological tools and artifacts crafted by students out of bone, wood, feathers and other materials.

One group of seventh graders was instructed to create an ancient culture based in the Himalayan Mountains. The other group developed a civilization that lived along the Amazon River.

"They create everything — the language, religious practices, clothing, housing, family structure ... and make it make sense for the place they've been given," Williams said.

Each group buries its own artifacts, then digs up and analyzes the other group's.

Later this month, Hyla's library will be converted into a museum to display the artifacts with both the original culture's descriptions and the archaeologists' hypothesized explanations.

"It's really cool," said Claire as she and Emma discovered what appeared to be a nest filled with plaster Amazonian ‘bones.' "I like how we create a whole culture and then crack the other culture."